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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

rshowalter - 06:52am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10117 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A story I think is worth telling.
MD9977 rshowalter 9/30/01 6:25am

rshowalter - 06:54am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10118 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD9648 rshowalter 9/22/01 1:19pm

possumdag - 06:56am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10119 of 10135)
Possumdag@excite.com

Were brains improved see would the nuclear matter be sooner resolved?

rshowalter - 06:56am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10120 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag 10/6/01 6:53am

Our brains are plenty good enough, if we use them, know something about our limitations, and the limitations of others, and check our work.

Current nuclear balances are unbelievably stupid, and with any reasonable judgement at all, we could find easy ways to get nukes under rational control - - which I think means, prohibited, with prohibitions that work.

rshowalter - 07:03am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10121 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Much of the advice needed could be gleaned from the very thoughtful literature of the "defenders of the faith" -- the people who burned so many people (but no more people than they felt they had to) at the stake.

They had their logic straight enough so that, for the same logic, with reasonable assumptions, VERY well checked about how people actually work, we could come up with fail safe, redundant, reasonably safe ways of taking nukes down. And prohibiting them, and other instruments of indiscriminant mass destruction, so that the prohibition worked.

I think we might improve on the logic of the inquisition, in more than a few spots - - and do much better. Do it more beautifully. Do it more safely.

But even that logic of torturers would be good enough to do a lot better than people are doing now.

rshowalter - 07:06am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10122 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I think the islamic theologians, who in many ways resemble the people who ran the Inquisition in Europe centuries ago, also know better than to tolerate Bin Laden, and terrorism.

Or should.

rshowalter - 07:07am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10123 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

How to search this thread: ... MD9976 rshowalter 9/30/01 6:21am

rshowalter - 07:16am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10124 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Just a quick thought on getting certain countries into condition where they can live comfortably and happily in the modern world. If they're in the middle ages, in the sociotechnical ways that matter for a set of circumstances, it couldn't hurt to go back, see how OUR CULTURE was during the middle ages, and the transitions that had to be made to achieve a workable modernity (to the extent we have.) People like Nate Rosenberg, and people he knows and knows about -- have a lot of insight into things like that. If we used it, we might save a lot of time, blood, agony, and flopping around.

rshowalter - 07:20am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10125 of 10135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I don't read many books, but I liked some things in this one:

. HOW THE WEST GREW RICH: The economic transformation of the industrial world

by Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr.

.... basic books, 1986

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